{"id":28488,"date":"2018-05-24T00:01:39","date_gmt":"2018-05-24T07:01:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=28488"},"modified":"2018-05-24T00:01:39","modified_gmt":"2018-05-24T07:01:39","slug":"white-hair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/white-hair\/","title":{"rendered":"My Brand-New White Hair. It’s Real. It’s Scary. But I Kinda Like It"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"I'm<\/a>
I’m coming out of the closet with the white hair I’ve hidden away for years. I like it, but I scare myself every time I look in the mirror. Selfie by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One of the things that happens when you’ve got mono is — you don’t have the zip to do\u00a0 much of anything. You don’t feel like writing a blog post. You don’t feel like spending a day at the mall or an hour at Zumba. And you certainly don’t give a darn that your roots are starting to show.<\/p>\n

I’ve let a lot of things go during my six-month (so far) siege with\u00a0the Epstein-Barr virus, including this blog and including the person looking back at me from the mirror.<\/p>\n

Baggy Pants, Neglected Website<\/strong><\/h6>\n

I’ve written only a couple of blog posts. And every morning I’ve donned the same old, same old baggy velour outfits.<\/p>\n

Spend three-plus hours at the hairdresser to rid myself of those tell-tale, age-revealing white roots? No way.<\/p>\n

But a few weeks ago, feeling quite a bit better, I paused long enough in front of the bathroom mirror to notice that my roots were seriously grown out. An inch or two of new hair was showing, and it was white, white, white.<\/p>\n

White hair? Me? What a thought. I’d been a brunette all my life. And I’d been<\/p>\n

\"Barbara<\/a>
On a Long Island beach, 1965. I’d always been a brunette, until I wasn’t. Barbara Newhall photo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

attacking those tell-tale gray and white hairs since my forties. I was a journalist, and if I wanted to survive in the competitive business of writing for publication, I had to think — and look — young and trendy.<\/p>\n

Journalism is a young person’s sport. Advertisers want to reach the young demographic. And the newspapers and magazines that employed me for decades were targeting the 18- to 35-year-old refrigerator-buying, restaurant-dining, Nike-sporting market. I felt I had to keep a youthful image, so I made sure that those gray hairs didn’t show.<\/p>\n

White Hair for Boomers and Me?<\/strong><\/h6>\n

But now, the nether years were upon me. Those baby boomers who had been my personal target demographic for so many years were following me into their 70s and oldish age. Their roots were probably as white as mine.<\/p>\n

Was it time for me — and my readers — to go natural?<\/p>\n

I decided to give it a try. Mono-weary as I was, I wasn’t getting out of the house much at the time. If I let the white hair grow out and it made me look old and rickety, only Jon would notice, and he wasn’t noticing. He was busy writing his thriller.<\/p>\n

Mid-March I reported to Gino over at Entourage. He cut most of the dyed and<\/p>\n

\"Barbara<\/a>
I thought my new white hair would mean I had to start wearing . . .<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Barbara<\/a>
. . . pastels only. But\u00a0 it looked just fine with dark red . . .<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Author<\/a>
. . . teal and navy. Selfies by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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highlighted hair away. But only most of it. It looked terrible, white in the front, salt and pepper in the back, and orange on top\u00a0 where the last vestiges of my color-treated hair lived on.<\/p>\n

A few weeks later, I went back to Gino and insisted that he cut it all off. All of it. Every last lock of artificially colored hair.<\/p>\n

Gino didn’t want to do it. He said my hair would be way too short.<\/p>\n

But I was OK with that. If I looked like I’d just been through chemotherapy, so much the better. That would put me in solidarity with my favorite neighbor, who’d had chemo last summer and was just starting to get her (gray) hair back.<\/p>\n

Gino chopped away, then smoothed product onto what was left of my hair. He pulled and twisted the strands until I had a sassy sticky-uppy haircut.<\/p>\n

I was now a 76-year-old with white hair and an in-your-face do, a strange person who still scares me, weeks later, whenever I catch a glimpse of her in the mirror.<\/p>\n

How do I look? Pretty, maybe. Youthful, maybe. On-trend, definitely.<\/p>\n

More about that getting older thing at “The Shame of Aging. The Big Seven-Five Has Finally Arrived.”<\/a> and “Gray Hairs, Wrinkles, and Kids Who Won’t Stop Growing Up.”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\"Author<\/a>
I like the white. But the salt and pepper look in back — not so much. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"White<\/a><\/p>\n

My white hair grew out when I was too sick with mono to keep it colored. To my surprise, I think I look smashing in my new look. Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28504,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[103,2087,2088,34,2086,82,1615,2089],"class_list":["post-28488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-a-case-of-the-human-condition","tag-aging","tag-baby-boomer-fashions","tag-covering-gray-hair","tag-dont-miss","tag-mono","tag-on-the-funny-side","tag-seventy-something","tag-white-hair"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28488\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}